


I'll Be There For You (totally just as a friend)

by SapphicScholar



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Cracky, F/F, Friends AU, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-09-28 17:23:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17187203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphicScholar/pseuds/SapphicScholar
Summary: A Friends AU in which Alex and Maggie are best friends and roommates who live across the hall from Winn and Mon-El. A bet leads to a threat that leads to a kiss that makes feelings that have been tamped down on for so long much, much harder to hide.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MGmt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MGmt/gifts).



> For MGmt – friend, you’ve left the kind of comments that fic writers live for and SO consistently that it seemed only right that you got a bday fic as a thank you. Obviously I couldn’t ask you what you might want for your fic without giving away the surprise, but I know you like AUs, so happy birthday and I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> And for those of you who might want to know what's coming, the premise is grounded in Friends episode 4x12 and the arc with the apartment (and if you want to know the inspiration, please go look at Monica's haircut and wardrobe that season and imagine all those posts about how different that show's OTP could have been)

“You guys get more of those chocolate cookies yet?” Mon-El asked, leaning over to peek into Alex’s grocery bag.

“Get the fuck out,” Alex grumbled, pulling her bag back before he could see that yes, she did get more cookies, but no, he could not have any.

Alex didn’t know how or when she got to be the kind of person whose apartment people visited. Actually, she did know. It was when Maggie moved in and made it feel like home. When Maggie accessorized her Spartan style with a few fleecy blankets and well-maintained bonsai trees. When Maggie revealed to everyone that she could bake (and bake well), which was, incidentally, about the same time as Kara decided that maybe their new place would be the ideal place for her group of friends to hang out. “Plus, Alex,” Kara had pointed out, “you live _right_ across the hall from Winn!” The fact that Kara’s one-night mistake also lived there went unspoken. Kara maintained that he was changing his ways. Alex maintained that James should give up his new apartment and move back in with Winn. And Winn…well, Winn liked the stupid scruff that Mon-El called a beard too much to change things.

“What’s wrong now?” Kara asked, catching sight of Mon-El sulking off to the side of the kitchen.

“He eats all the cookies, and now he wants to know if I bought more, so he can steal them again,” Alex grumbled.

“I don’t really want to know if you bought them,” Mon-El clarified. “I know you did.”

“Oh really?” Alex arched an eyebrow and folded her arms over her chest.

“You might not give me much credit, but I know you way better than you think.”

“Please,” Alex scoffed. “You probably read some skeezy book about how to pick up women, and now you think you know all about us.”

Maggie chose that moment to head into the kitchen. “What’s up?”

“Alex is mad because I know that she bought cookies. Hell, I bet I could guess all the items in your bag.”

“Ooh!” Winn’s head perked up from where he’d been hunched over his laptop on the living room sofa. “A bet?”

“Ten bucks?” Mon-El held out his hand to Alex, who simply glared at it.

Winn slid into the chair by Mon-El in the kitchen. “I’ll help, so let’s make it 20. And Kara, that means you have to referee.”

Kara shrugged. “Can’t think of anything better I could be doing.”

“Oh really?” Alex looked over at Kara, who purposefully avoided her gaze. “No articles and deadlines ringing a bell?”

“Hmm…can’t say they do.”

“Whatever. If you want to watch Mon-El lose a bet, go for it.”

“Win a bet, you mean.” Alex rolled her eyes as Mon-El turned to Kara. “Okay, how many things did she buy?”

Grabbing the bag off the counter, Kara counted through them. “Eight!”

“I think we should get ten guesses,” Winn chimed in.

Alex shook her head. “No way. Eight items, eight guesses.”

Always the peacemaker, Kara stepped in, holding the bag aloft. “What about nine guesses?”

After a moment’s consultation between Winn and Mon-El, they nodded. “Deal.” Alex simply shrugged her agreement.

Kara smiled widely as she floated up to the counter with the bag in front of her. “Okay, first guess, boys!”

“Chocos!” Mon-El called out without a moment’s hesitation.

“Whatever,” Alex huffed. “That’s what you were asking for, and you knew you had eaten all of mine.”

Kara plucked the box of Chocos out of the bag, sticking them off to the side. “Next guess.”

Winn whispered something to Mon-El, who shook his head. “Nope. Maggie gets the real groceries. Alex just buys snacks.” Alex pursed her lips but stayed silent. There was no way she was giving anything away. “Ooh, sister night is tomorrow, which means two pints of ice cream.”

“Flavor?” Kara asked, earning a nod of approval from Alex.

“Half-Baked for Kara,” Mon-El began with a wink that made Alex want to gag. “And double-chocolate brownie?”

“Wow! You are correct.”

“Whatever,” Alex muttered. It wasn’t impressive. If he’d ever been in her freezer, he’d have seen it, and she knew damn well he spent a lot of time with his little hands searching for snacks in there.

Sensing Alex’s growing frustration, Maggie chose that moment to chime in. “Keep guessing, Daxam. You’ve still got five items to go.”

“Oh!” Mon-El’s face lit up and he whispered in Winn’s ear.

“Nope.” Winn shook his head. “She’s got another two weeks to go.”

After a moment’s confusion, Alex felt her cheeks flame red. “What the fuck, Schott?”

“Nothing personal, just, you know, I’d like to protect my job…”

Before Alex could kill anyone, Kara asked loudly, “Do you have another guess?”

Winn was the one to call out that time. “A pint of that vegan chocolate and peanut butter ice cream!”

“Winn!” Mon-El yelled, stomping his foot on the ground in frustration. “This is Alex’s bag!”

With a shake of his head and a confident smile, Winn simply turned to Kara, who pulled the item out of the bag. “You are correct.”

“How’d you know?”

“Maggie pulled two night shifts this past week, and you know that when she’s stressed Alex always—”

“That’s enough!” Alex hoped her glare was enough to keep Winn’s damn mouth shut. Just because Kara had gone and told Winn about her stupid crush on her stupid roommate didn’t mean that the whole world—especially Maggie—needed to know that she’d done the most clichéd lesbian thing ever and fallen for her best friend. Sure, her best friend happened to be gay too, but it wasn’t like she was interested.

“Aww, you look out for me, Danvers?” Maggie batted her eyelashes, and Alex felt her heart skip a beat.

“Whatever, you know, I don’t need you getting grumpy on me or anything.”

Rolling her eyes at her sister’s terrible attempts at covering up the fact that she gave a shit about someone who wasn’t family, Kara cleared her throat and held up the bag. “Four items remain.”

Winn pointed his finger at Kara. “You said you wanted to do a taco night this week. But Alex doesn’t buy real groceries, so…tortilla chips.”

“Yes!” Kara pulled them out of the bag.

“Limes for margaritas.”

“Another yes!” Kara pulled a bag of limes out.

“And tequila!”

“Wrong!” Alex crowed. “We already have tequila. Suck it, Schott.”

“We still have two guesses left.”

“Fine.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Winn guessed again. “Those protein bars for her morning workouts.”

Alex grumbled as Kara pulled out a box of them, looking far too gleeful as the contest came down to the wire. “One item left. One guess left. Can they do it?”

The silence stretched on for a long while before Mon-El’s face lit up. “Gloves!”

“Dude, really? Our final guess, and you’re going with gloves?”

“What kind of gloves?” Kara asked.

“The kind Alex keeps in her bedroom,” Mon-El answered without missing a beat, ignoring the way Alex’s whole face blanched, her eyes widening and her hands curling into fists.

“You sneaking around with someone, Danvers?” Maggie asked once Kara pulled a box of latex gloves out of the bag and deemed the boys the winners.

Hearing something that almost sounded like hurt in Maggie’s tone, Alex shook her head. “No! I, I wouldn’t lie to you like that. You’re my best friend.”

“I mean, hey, no, good for you!” Maggie managed, her smile not quite reaching her eyes.

“No, but I didn’t—wait.” Alex narrowed her eyes at Maggie. “I thought _you_ took them.”

“What?”

“The empty box was in the trash the other day, but I haven’t, you know, whatever.”

“Oh yeah,” Mon-El laughed, “that was me. I saw this YouTube video about a guy who said you couldn’t put a gallon of seltzer water in there without it exploding, so I bet one of the guys down at the bar that—”

“That’s cheating! He would never have guessed gloves if he didn’t know he’s finished them!”

“You wouldn’t have bought them if I didn’t finish them, and I got all the other items!”

“Kara!” Several voices called out in unison.

“Uh…I think Mon-El has a good point.”

“Seriously?” Alex flipped Mon-El off as he stuck his tongue out at her.

“Just admit it, Alex. We know you guys better than you know us.”

“Hey.” Maggie crossed her arms. “You guys didn’t guess anything about me.”

“Ooh!” Kara’s face lit up as she looked between them. “What if we did, like, a whole trivia game? Stuff about all four of you. Winner gets the twenty dollars that you bet today.”

Mon-El looked ready to complain about not getting his money then, but Winn nodded for him. “We’re in.”

“What do you say, Sawyer? Want to kick their asses?”

“With you, Danvers? Always.”

Alex tamped down on the fluttering feeling that erupted in her chest at Maggie’s words. _Just a friend. Just a friend. Just a friend._ If she told herself that enough times, surely one of these days it would sink in.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let the trivia games begin...

The following day, Kara came straight from CatCo to Alex and Maggie’s apartment—well, straight there, save for one little detour to put out a fire, but all things considered, it was about as direct as Supergirl’s route ever was. “I’ve got the quiz board all ready!”

Maggie perked up at Kara’s announcement, watching as she dragged in an oversized poster set up like a Jeopardy board. “I see the article writing went really well last night, huh?”

“It happened, it happened. It’s not like—whatever, Snapper sends back everything I hand in at least three times before he even looks at it. I’m pretty sure I could just write, ‘I AM SUPERGIRL!’ on every page, and he wouldn’t even notice.”

“I think Alex might kill ya.”

“Only if Snapper noticed. Which he wouldn’t.”

“You really miss Cat, huh?”

Maggie smirked at the sight of the light pink flush creeping across Kara’s cheeks. “I don’t—”

“I meant as a boss, little Danvers.”

“Oh! Right, yeah, of course.” Maggie hid a knowing smile behind her hand. “So, anyway, where’s Alex?”

“On her way home from work. She lost track of time in the lab analyzing that newest alien goop you brought back—you know how she gets.” Kara sighed, wondering if Alex even stopped to eat. Normally she’d fly over to drop something off if Winn texted her that Alex was still in the lab come 2 or so, but there had been a bit of a crisis at CatCo that had kept her busy all afternoon. “But don’t worry, I dropped off a burger and fries around 1, so she shouldn’t be too hangry when she deals with Mon-El.”

“You’re perfect, thank you!”

Maggie shrugged, ducking her head slightly. “It was just a burger.”

“Yeah…but you knew to bring it to her.”

“I knew she had a new sample, that’s all. Anyone could have guessed that she wouldn’t stop to eat.”

Kara didn’t point out that no, most people wouldn’t guess it or bother to think about it. And they especially wouldn’t take time out of their day to do something about it. She settled with a simple, “Thanks.”

The boys arrived a few minutes later, followed closely by Alex, who raced in looking slightly disheveled. “So sorry I’m late I—”

“Got caught up in the lab,” Maggie finished in unison with her, already taking the bike helmet out of her hand and putting it away in its spot next to her own in the closet. As Alex kicked off her boots and hung up her coat, Maggie pulled down her favorite mug, filling it with the last of the fresh pot of coffee she had put on when she got home from work.

“Oh and where are—”

“Right here.” Maggie handed Alex her glasses, knowing that after too many hours spent staring into the microscope, her contacts started to irritate her eyes.

“What would I do without you?” Alex murmured, shaking her head and taking a half-step backwards when she realized how very sentimental she sounded.

“I don’t know. Probably trip on your helmet a lot.”

“Never broke my leg before you moved in…”

“Mhmm, sheer luck.”

“Yo, Dr. and Mrs. Danvers, you coming?” Mon-El called out before tossing a pretzel up into the air and catching it in his mouth.

Just as Alex hissed an angry, “Shut up,” at him, Maggie furrowed her eyebrows and asked, “Why are we taking her last name?”

“Why don’t we all sit down?” Kara motioned to the couch, earning a mouthed, “Thank you,” from Alex. Once they all gathered around, Kara revealed her quiz board and went over the rules. “Okay, I figure we’ll do twenty questions, ten for each team, and the winner will be the team with the most points at the end.” Everyone nodded along. “Now, I broke it down into categories that you can choose from, so we’ve got: Fears and Pet Peeves, Ancient History, Literature, and Exes and Ohs.”

“Who starts?” Alex asked.

Kara pulled a quarter out of her pocket. “Flip for it.”

Everyone nodded, watching as she tossed it up into the air. Alex yelled out, “Heads!” at the same moment Mon-El called, “Tails!”

Kara caught it in her outstretched hand and quickly clapped down her other hand so no one could sneak a peek. Once they’d settled back into their seats, Kara pulled her hand away, grimacing at the sight of the smooshed quarter. Perhaps she’s been a _little_ excited about the game herself … “I, uh, it looks like tails!”

Alex rolled her eyes at Mon-El’s cheering, but her expression brightened considerably as Maggie leaned into her side. “It’s cool. Now we get to see them answer wrong first.”

“We’ll take Ancient History,” Winn said, pointing at the second column on the board.

Plucking a card out from its slot, Kara made a show of clearing her throat and holding up a fake microphone as she put on her best game show host voice. “We’ve all seen her in a cast, but just how many bones has Alex Danvers broken in her lifetime?”

Maggie smirked as both Winn and Mon-El panicked. “Uh…okay, there was the leg,” Mon-El mumbled.

“Her arm, too. And there were a few ribs the year before that…maybe two or three? I guess they probably all count as their own bone.”

“And doesn’t Kara have some picture in her apartment with Alex at a school dance in a cast?”

“Clock is ticking,” Kara called out, tapping her finger against her watch gently enough to avoid shattering the glass face.

Looking helplessly over at Winn, Mon-El guessed, “Uh…10?”

“Nope, 13.” Alex grinned at the mildly horrified looks she got in return. “I broke several bones in my hand all at once.”

“Alright, no point for that. Alex and Maggie, your turn to choose.”

After a moment’s consultation, they pointed at Literature.

“What is the first Earth book Mon-El read?”

“ _Romeo and Juliet_!” Alex bit back her comments about how he never quite managed to finish it and tried (and failed) to woo her sister with cheesy pick-up lines about it. Getting the question right and moving into the lead was enough…for now.

“Alright, the girls are up by one. Winn and Mon-El, choose wisely.”

“Exes and Ohs!” Mon-El nearly yelled.

“Alex’s last date was with whom?”

Winn jumped to his feet, pointing at the board. “Last year with Max Lord! Even though it was for work!”

“That is correct!”

“Thanks, sis,” Alex grumbled, sinking back into her seat and ignoring what she could only assume was Maggie’s pitying expression. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been asked out, but things always got in the way. Like work in the lab and Supergirl emergencies and her gigantic crush on Maggie Sawyer that meant she’d text a potential date and tell them something had come up and she actually couldn’t make it if Maggie mentioned maybe wanting to do a lazy pizza night at the apartment, just the two of them.

“Your chance to take the lead back again. What’ll it be?”

Maggie answered that time. “We’ll do Fears and Pet Peeves.”

“What is Winn’s biggest secret pet peeve _about pets_?”

Maggie glanced over at Alex, a question in her eyes. “Uh…is it pets in costumes?”

Alex shrugged. “Could be.”

“Is that your final answer?” Kara glanced between the two of them, earning reluctant nods. “I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. Winn’s secret pet peeve is when adults call pets their babies.”

“Seriously?”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Winn grumbled. “It’s not that they can’t be part of the family, but they’re not your children!”

“Alright, it’s still anyone’s game! Winn and Mon-El, pick your category.”

“Uhm, let’s do Exes and Ohs again.”

Kara fished a new card out of her pile. “We all know Maggie’s dated a few aliens in her day. Name three of their home planets.”

“Darla's a Roltikkon,” Mon-El called out.

Winn looked over at Maggie. “I know you dated someone from Star Haven too.”

Maggie waited as Winn and Mon-El conferred, trying to figure out a third alien ex of hers. Finally Mon-El’s face broke out in a grin. “Wait! There was totally something between you and M’gann at one point. So Mars.”

“Wrong.” Maggie gave Alex a little high-five as the score stayed tied. “She’s just a friend. No feelings there.”

Winn scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah, because friends _never_ have crushes.”

Alex turned the full force of her glare on Winn, taking a minute amount of satisfaction in the way he shrunk back into his chair.

“Alright!” Kara clapped her hands loudly, drawing attention back to the board. “Maybe I made these questions a little too hard…but anyway, Alex and Maggie, your pick!”

“Uh, let’s try Ancient History.”

“Winn was how old when he got his first kiss?”

“15?” Maggie guessed.

“Wrong, 18.”

“Whatever,” Winn grumbled. “Not many people want to go on a date with the son of the local homicidal toymaker.”

“Man, you guys are all terrible at this game.” Kara was met with a barrage of yelling about how the game was rigged, or the questions were just weird, or if they had been asked about _literally anything else_ they would have gotten all of them right. “Fine, fine. If you don’t like my questions, I’ll pack up and leave.”

“No!” everyone called out in unison.

“Then no disrespecting my board.”

Everyone nodded quickly, settling back into their seats like model pupils.

“Mon-El and Winn, I believe it’s your turn.”

The next several rounds progressed smoothly enough, and both teams managed to answer several questions correctly, bringing them into the final round with a tied score of 4-4.

“Okay, boys, if you get this next question, you’re in the lead, and they can only hope to tie the game. If you get it wrong, they’ll have the chance to win that $20.”

“Let’s make it interesting,” Alex mused, looking directly at Mon-El, who she knew was her best bet at making a few extra dollars. “How about we play for $50?”

“Why not $50 each? Winning team gets 100 bucks.”

“Deal.” Alex was already shaking hands with him when Maggie kicked her shins.

“What the hell! I don’t wanna lose $50.”

“We won’t. C’mon, we’ve been on fire these past few rounds. Just one more, that’s all.”

“Fine,” Maggie sighed, dropping her head to Alex’s shoulder. “You better be right, Danvers.”

Alex could only manage to gulp and nod her head.

“Winn and Mon-El, pick your final category.”

“Exes and Ohs!”

Kara made a show of shuffling her three remaining cards in that category before plucking one out. “Alright. Who was Alex’s first lesbian crush?”

Mon-El leapt up out of his seat. “Maggie!”

“Dude!” Winn yelled, but Kara was already shaking her head.

“I’m sorry, that would be her high school best friend, Vicky Donahue.”

“But you weren’t out in high school.”

“Doesn’t mean she didn’t have a big ol’ crush, though,” Maggie teased, throwing an arm around Alex’s shoulders and pulling her into a hug. “But it’s cool, we all do it.”

“Oh, so Maggie’s just—”

“Shut. Up.” Alex growled out the words, feeling like her whole body was warm enough to spontaneously combust. Perhaps that would be preferable, though. She could simply burn up in flames and never have to see Maggie try to let her down gently when she explained that she liked her, _but not like that_.

“Besides”—Maggie shrugged, looking up at Mon-El—“Alex never had a crush on me. She just got drunk at our celebratory coming out drinks and kissed me.”

Winn coughed loudly, trying to cover Mon-El’s confused questions. “Yep! Nothing like a drunken make out right after you finally admit you’re bi as hell. Or, you know, gay as hell for you,” he added, glancing over at Alex.

“Right.” Alex forced out a bark of a laugh through gritted teeth. “I was so drunk…” It was almost true. She certainly got drunk _after_ the fact. She was just grateful that she’d decided at the last minute to scrap her romantic speech and move right into kissing. At the very least, it saved her the humiliation of having Maggie know that she pretty much loved her and had been falling harder and harder for her since the day they’d moved in together.

With a clap of her hands, Kara drew everyone’s attention back to the board and away from Alex once more. “Okay, last question. If you get this right, you’ll win the whole thing.”

“But no pressure, right?” Maggie teased, knocking her shoulder against Alex’s and making her heart thump against her chest so loudly she swore Maggie could probably hear it too.

“We’ll, uh”—Alex cleared her throat, blushing red at the way her voice cracked—“let’s take Ancient History.”

“Mon-El has had four jobs since he came to Earth. Name them!”

“Uh…CatCo intern!”

Kara nodded, holding up one finger.

“Bartender!”

A second finger went up.

Alex perked up. “Oh! He went and beat people up for a while as a, uh, a debt collector!”

A third finger.

Then they sat in silence, looking at one another, desperately trying to figure out what other job Mon-El could have held.

“Do you give up?”

“No!” Alex yelled, but she had nothing else to offer.

“Maggie, a last guess?”

“Uh…a superhero?” Alex snickered behind her hand as Maggie put the word in scare quotes.

“Tragically, you missed his single day’s employment as a club promoter.”

“What? When the hell did you do that?”

Mon-El shrugged his shoulders. “Some guy told me he’d give me a hundred bucks to get some ladies back to his club. There was some…confusion about my role. Apparently you only hand out flyers?”

With a loud sigh, Alex shook her head. “So…do we get partial credit?”

“Nope. You guys are still tied. But”—Kara bent over, fishing around in her bag for a small box—“I planned for this! We are now entering into the sudden death round.”

Mon-El turned to Alex. “What do you say we make this even more interesting? Double the cash?”

“No, Alex.” Maggie crossed her arms and glared at her roommate. “I’m not potentially losing that much money.”

“What about this…” Alex mused, turning back to Mon-El, with a glint in her eyes that meant trouble for anyone on the receiving end of it. “If you win, you get $200.”

“Alex!”

“Don’t worry,” Alex whispered, “we won’t lose. And if we for some reason do, it’s my fault, so I can cover it.” Maggie looked ready to protest, but Alex’s attention was already on Mon-El again. “But when we win—”

“If you win.”

“Sure… If we win, you can’t throw any more parties in your apartment.”

“ _Ooh_.” Maggie might not have wanted to part with cash, but if they could put an end to those god-forsaken parties that kept her up until three in the morning before she had to get up at six for work…well, she might be willing to put even more money on the line for that.

“No way,” Mon-El said at the same moment Winn nodded and reached out his hand.

Alex chuckled, knowing Winn couldn’t stand them any more than she could, though at least he was able to sleep through it with the high-tech DEO ear plugs that made Alex feel like her whole head was underwater.

“Okay, okay.” Mon-El paused, thinking for a few minutes. “I’ll stop throwing parties if you win, _but_ if we win, we switch apartments.”

Alex crossed her arms over her chest. “If those are the stakes, then you move out entirely.”

“Hey! I’m not a bad roommate!”

“You’re a terrible neighbor.”

“Besides the parties, name one thing.”

He didn’t quite expect the barrage of criticism. “You still ask me if I think Kara would take you back, even though you know she’s not interested.”

Maggie chimed in, “You bring your one-night stands over here for breakfast in the morning and tried to pawn one off on me.”

“She was bi!”

“Not the point!”

“You put whole pizza boxes down the trash chute so that garbage gets stuck, and then the whole building smells for days.”

“I went and got it, didn’t I?”

“Only after two days of living in what may as well have been a garbage dump!”

“Fine, fine. I could get a place on my own. A better place. But we’re not gonna lose, so it won’t matter.”

“Alex, are you sure you wanna bet the apartment?” Maggie whispered, gesturing around at the nice hardwood and the exposed brick.

“I…c’mon think about what we’re gonna win. No more days running on two hours of sleep or bad smells seeping in from the hallway making it impossible to eat in the apartment.”

“Okay, I guess.”

Five tense minutes later, the whole building seemed to echo with Alex’s loud, long, “NO!”


	3. Chapter 3

“Maggie, I swear to god, take that frying pan out of the suitcase right now.”

Maggie glanced up at Alex, finding her looking frantic as she trailed behind Maggie, pulling things out of bags and stuffing them back into the wrong cabinets. “It sucks, but we made a bet. We lost. And now we’ll just have to make the best of it.”

“No! Come on, Mon-El never would have moved out if he’d lost.”

After a moment’s consideration, Maggie inclined her head. “No…probably not. But is that really the level of comparison you want?”

“I just want to keep my big apartment!”

“Before I got here, you were using, like, a third of this space.”

“Well, yeah,” Alex hedged, scuffing her toes against the kitchen tile, “but now you’re here, and it’s, you know, homey or whatever.”

Maggie reached out, taking Alex’s hands in her own. Alex prayed she couldn’t feel the way they shook. “We’ll make it feel like our home over there too. I promise.”

It probably deserved some kind of response, but Alex’s mind was still stuck on the phrase, “our home,” and words seemed increasingly difficult to come by, so she gave Maggie’s hands a squeeze instead.

“What would you say if, instead of packing, we make the boys carry our stuff and spend our last night like we did our first night here?”

“What? Eating pizza?”

“And drinking cheap wine and staying up all night talking.” Maggie smiled up at Alex, and Alex knew she couldn’t say no to anything once the dimples came out.

“I suppose I could think of worse ways to spend an evening…”

“Atta girl. C’mon, I’ll call in the pizza now. You go pull out the blankets and get the living room set up.”

“Wine first,” Alex insisted, already rummaging around in the half-empty “random shit” drawer for the corkscrew.

Half an hour later, two pizzas and a box of garlic knots arrived, and Maggie knew they weren’t from what had become their favorite place in town, but Anthony’s had been where they’d ordered their first night. It had been what they’d eaten, sprawled out on the lone couch Alex owned with Maggie’s fleecy blankets draped around them like capes. It had been the moment Maggie decided that she made the right choice in moving out of the old place she and Emily used to share because she was finally somewhere that could become a home again.

Caught up in reminiscing, Maggie nearly missed Alex sneaking away with the box of garlic knots and piling them high on her plate. “No you don’t!” she yelled, running across the apartment and leaping onto Alex’s back to yank one out of her hands. “You have to share!”

Alex held her plate out as far away from her body as she could, laughing loudly as Maggie attempted to cling to her back while surging forward and grabbing at them. “I thought you wanted a repeat of our first night.”

“A repeat of everything but missing out on the garlic knots,” Maggie whined, giving up and dropping her head down to Alex’s shoulder with a drawn-out sigh.

“Your sulking is ineffective if I can’t see you.”

A moment later, Maggie’s phone was thrust into her face, the front-facing camera on, revealing Maggie’s pout.

“Oh my god, you dork. Get off me, and I’ll share.”

“Why should I trust you, Danvers?”

Alex shuddered at the feeling of Maggie’s warm breath ghosting across her ear and tried to disguise it as a laugh. “I, uh, I’m super trustworthy?”

Maggie let out a bark of laughter. “Please. I mean, in general, sure. But I’ve seen you compete with Kara for food. I want a down payment.”

“What?” Alex tried to twist around to see Maggie’s face, gulping as the movement brought her lips mere centimeters away from Maggie’s, and god it would be so easy to just lean forward and…

“Hold out three of the garlic knots.”

Shaking her head, Alex did as she was told. Before she could ask why in the world that was a solution, Maggie had leaned forward, running her tongue across all three. “There. Now they’re mine.”

Alex figured it was best not to point out that she really didn’t find Maggie’s mouth gross at all, and, in fact, kind of wanted it to be pressed against her mouth. Or on her neck. Or really anywhere on her body—she wasn’t picky. “Oh, you, uh, you got me.”

With a self-satisfied little hum, Maggie let herself slide back down to the ground, plucking the three garlic knots from Alex’s outstretched hand and dropping them onto a napkin.

Once they’d piled their plates high with pizza and filled their cups even higher with wine, they settled into that same old couch that was too comfortable to get rid of, even though it matched absolutely nothing else in the apartment. They ate in silence for several minutes until Maggie broke it, her voice soft. “I know I’m the one saying we should move, but I’ll miss it here.”

“Then we should stay,” Alex implored, hating that she had done something to make Maggie upset.

“No, no, we should honor it. At least for a little while… They might be easier to negotiate with later if we let them think they won.”

“I guess.”

“But hey, we can make it easier. What’s your least favorite memory from this apartment?”

Alex tried to think back, pushing away some of the more genuinely depressing memories—the nights she’d spent huddled up in her room pretending she had the flu after Maggie pushed her away, telling her she was drunk and too new to everything; the morning after Kara, infected with Red K, had told her they weren’t real family; the long days of not knowing and waiting for information while Kara’s life hung in the balance, preserved only by some thirty-first-century stasis pod. “Uh, I guess I could have done without ugly naked guy across the way.”

Maggie laughed loudly. “I’ll admit, not my favorite view to wake up to.”

Alex shuddered, remembering the first time she’d caught sight of him, strutting around without the slightest bit of clothing on. She’d assumed it was a fluke. There were definitely times she’d gotten out of the shower only to remember she had done laundry the day before and had left all of her towels in her room. Of course, she tended to sprint across the living room, rather than linger and bend over, but still. It could have been a one-time mistake. But no. Day after day, there he was. Strutting his stuff, letting the whole world see what he clearly thought was a great view.

Maggie bumped her shoulder against Alex’s arm. “I thought your worst memory was gonna be the time we got locked out on the fire escape.”

“Oh god, in the 95-degree weather?” The sun had been relentless, beating down on them all day and making the metal stairs painful to touch as they were forced to stand for hours without food, water, or cell phones until Kara heard them screaming for Supergirl.

“When else?”

“Well, there was the time we _thought_ we got locked out…”

With a snort of laughter, Maggie choked on her sip of wine, spluttering as it burned the back of her nose. “Fuck, warn me when you’re gonna bring that day up again.”

Snickering, Alex shook her head. “You mean getting high and sitting by ourselves on the fire escape for six full hours wasn’t your idea of the best day ever?”

“If I hadn’t gotten paranoid as shit, maybe! You were just fine. You giggled for six straight hours. I cried and kept insisting the police were going to find me.”

“I was only giggling because you forgot that you were the police.”

“I didn’t forget. I just assumed they’d find me and fire me because you can’t be a detective in prison!”

“Oh my god, right! And I kept insisting that you could be the best detective ever in prison. Solve all sorts of crimes that the cops didn’t even know had been committed yet.”

“Ah yes, the dystopian future of sci-fi dreams. I vaguely remember the theme song you made up for me.”

Alex waved off Maggie’s comment. “Whatever, you could totally be successful as a behind-bars detective.”

“Aww, but then I wouldn’t get to cuddle with you on the couch and watch shitty TV after work.” Maggie snuggled into Alex’s side as if to demonstrate, and Alex let herself enjoy the bittersweet moment, clinging to everything she got out of Maggie’s friendship, her presence in Alex’s life, instead of dwelling on how much it hurt to be reminded of all the things they’d never share.

“What, uh, what’s your favorite memory from here?”

Maggie tilted her head back, gazing up at Alex. “It can’t be this? Cuddling here with you?”

Alex felt her chest constrict, making it harder and harder to breathe as she looked down at those big brown eyes. “C’mon, I’m sure there are better moments.”

“I don’t know about that, Danvers. But I guess I did enjoy hosting Thanksgiving dinners.”

“Oh really? You loved sitting between my mother and me while I got shitfaced trying to come out to her? Twice!”

“I mean, okay, the first year sucked. The second year she at least ended up being really good about you coming out as gay. Way better than she was about you being DEO. And then this year was incident-free, except Mon-El’s whole stuffing misunderstanding…”

“So this is your favorite because…?”

Maggie shrugged, her gaze dropping to her hands as she picked at her fingernails. “I don’t know. I guess…I get to feel like part of the family.”

“Fuck,” Alex cursed under her breath. “I didn’t mean to—you are family, you absolutely are. I guess I always get caught on how much stress comes with the holidays.”

“Oh I remember,” Maggie laughed. “I was there for the mashed potato debacle of 2015 and the back-to-back coming outs.”

Alex cringed at the reminder. The fact that everything with Maggie—all the hurt and pain and regret—had still been so fresh the second year, coupled with the fact that her mother’s acceptance had come right along with the assumption that Alex was coming out because of Maggie had been…less than ideal. She was just happy Maggie hadn’t been there for that half of the conversation.

A poke to Alex’s side pulled her out of her spiraling thoughts. “But what about our New Year’s Eve party? That was pretty great.”

“Even though Winn threw up over the fire escape?”

“Better there than in our apartment.”

“Fair enough.”

“What about you?” Maggie asked, shifting to look at Alex. “What are your favorite memories from here?”

After a few moments of contemplation, a small smile tugged up the corners of Alex’s mouth. “I did enjoy my gay education with you.”

“Oh, the movies and all!” Maggie chuckled and winked at Alex. “Gotta be careful how you phrase that. Brings to mind certain other activities.”

Swallowing heavily, Alex forced herself to nod. “Right, right. Yeah. Of course.” She didn’t mention that for weeks leading up to the disastrous kiss she had fantasized about exactly that—the domesticity of a shared daily life coupled with new nightly activities, the kisses they’d share in the beginning that would eventually lead them back to one of their beds…the way Maggie would take her time, would guide Alex through it, would show her exactly what it was she’d been missing all those years…

“It was fun, though—getting to relive it all with you.”

Alex’s voice was barely a whisper when she managed a, “Yeah.”

“Wait! Do you remember that night after Lucy and James broke up?”

“With the margaritas and the unicorn onesie and Twister? Yeah, don’t really think I’ll ever forget that one.”

“Did we ever find the spinner?”

“Maybe that’ll be the one upside to moving: we can finally play Twister again.”

“Would we even survive another round? We all had to call out sick from work the next day, and didn’t Lucy’s foot get stuck in Kara’s hood at one point and almost break her leg?” Maggie cracked up, barely able to catch her breath as she thought back on the night. “And good lord, whose idea was it to add in sips of margaritas between each round?”

Alex inched her hand up into the air as she took a long drought from her glass of wine. “Guilty.”

“Wait, really? _You_ were the reason the world didn’t stop spinning for, like, six hours?”

“It was that or play Lucy’s version of strip Twister!”

“How does one even play strip Twister?”

“I don’t know… Maybe you can opt out of moving to a new square if you take off your clothes?”

“So you’re telling me I could’ve avoided a black eye from Kara’s overenthusiastic elbow if I’d just gotten nude and stood off to the side?”

“I imagine we played more rounds than you had clothes, though. So then you’d have just ended up playing naked Twister.” _Don’t picture it. Don’t picture it. Don’t picture it._

“Probably would’ve had better traction than I did in my socks,” Maggie sniggered, her cheeks coloring slightly—whether from the laughter or the wine, Alex couldn’t tell. “But then again, there’s no fun in being the only naked person at a party.”

“Speaking from experience, Sawyer?”

Lowering her voice to a dramatic whisper, Maggie leaned in close to Alex’s ear. “That’s one secret I’ll never tell.”

“Ah yes, what would we have done without Kara’s much tamer post-breakup Gossip Girl marathon?”

“Lost out on a lot of good catch phrases, duh.”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence then, both of them reflecting back on the years they’d shared together in the apartment. Alex’s train of thought came stuttering to a stop when Maggie flopped down into her lap.

“Know what I want?” Alex didn’t dare venture a guess, too many of the things _she_ wanted swirling through her mind. “I want brownies.”

“That so?”

“Mhmm.” Maggie nodded, flashing Alex a sideways smile that managed to be just as effective as her right-side-up ones.

“And where do you propose getting these brownies?”

“We should make them. That way they’re warm and gooey.”

“Last time we drunk baked we nearly burned the place down.”

“Alex.” Maggie stretched it out into several long syllables.

“I forgot how whiney you got after too much cheap wine.”

“Think about it this way,” Maggie reasoned, rolling over and nearly off the couch before righting herself on her elbows, her cheek falling back to Alex’s thigh. “Oh.” She patted it. “You’ve been working out more than usual.”

Alex felt heat spread up her chest and over her cheeks and just knew that a deep red blush was following in its wake. She cleared her throat. “You, uh, were saying something about the brownies?”

“Oh, yeah. So if we burn down the apartment, then it’s the boys’ problem. We have theirs.”

“You’ve got an answer for everything, huh?”

Maggie nodded, smiling happily at her plan.

As it turned out, they did not burn down the apartment. Instead, they baked and ate an entire pan of undercooked brownies—Maggie preferred them that way, and Alex was happy enough to do what made her smile—before passing out in a tangled heap on the couch.


	4. Chapter 4

After a long day of hungover moving (done almost exclusively by super-powered alien friends), Alex and Maggie were forced to admit that they now lived across the hall. In the small apartment. In the stinky apartment. In the apartment that had been half-inhabited by Mon-El and contaminated during too many late-night ragers with things neither of them wanted to think about.

The cabinet doors stuck and creaked when they opened. The fridge, while emptied of food, still carried with it a whiff of milk long ago expired. One of the bedroom doors was, inexplicably, cut in half, requiring a two handed motion to be opened in one go. The bathroom was small, their large tub having been replaced by a standing shower whose tiled walls, while technically clean, conjured up images of mildew-y locker room stalls. Gone were the large windows and their fire escape balcony. Gone was the abundant natural light that poured in each morning, bathing their living space in a soft, orangey glow. Gone were the side-by-side bedrooms that had come to feel like home.

“I’m sorry.” Alex’s voice cracked on the words. And she wasn’t sure if it was the lingering hangover or the fumes in the air or the desperation born of catching glimpses of Maggie’s crestfallen expression each time they found yet another thing to hate about the new apartment, but Alex couldn’t help the feeling that her life was spiraling out of control. “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, it’s okay. We—we both got questions wrong. And we’ll make this place ours.”

“But it’s not.” Alex choked back a sob. “You made our last place—it was ours.”

“Technically it was yours,” Maggie said with a wink, trying to lighten the mood. “I just crashed in your spare bedroom after a nasty breakup and never left.”

Alex shrugged her shoulders. “Didn’t really feel like home until you got there.” She was too busy picking at her nails to notice the way Maggie’s expression softened, her eyes widening, her sleeve wiping away all evidence of the tears she didn’t let fall.

“C’mon, if we did it once, we can do it again.” She reached out a hand, and Alex prayed her palms weren’t sweaty as she let Maggie grasp it.

They spent the next five hours eating Chinese takeout and scrubbing ever surface of the apartment and rearranging their furniture again and again until it was in some kind of configuration that sort of made sense, even though it didn’t all fit too well in the smaller space. By the end of it, their clothes and kitchen items and books were all still in boxes, but the place smelled a little better and looked a little better, and all of that was a pretty notable improvement.

“We’ll just keep at it, yeah?” Maggie asked, flashing Alex that determined look she got in her eyes whenever she set her mind to a task. “Little by little, you’ll see.”

“I trust you,” Alex whispered. But she still couldn’t stop the guilt that clawed its way up from her gut, nearly choking her when she caught sight of Maggie’s shoulders slumping ever so slightly when she looked at the room that was supposed to be hers. She’d taken the nicer room on Alex’s unwavering insistence, but it wasn’t _hers_. It wasn’t the space she’d taken weeks carefully filling with the few things she owned, the few things that had made it with her from Blue Springs to her aunt’s house to college to the police academy to Gotham and, finally, to National City. And Alex hated herself for taking that little piece of home away from Maggie.

That night, Alex found she couldn’t sleep. Between the flickering street lamp directly outside her miniscule bedroom window and the creeping sense of not being home, of not being safe, Alex eventually gave up, traipsing out to the living room and promptly slamming her shin into an end table that wasn’t where it used to be.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” came Maggie’s voice, tinged with that soft, raspy quality it took on whenever she was particularly tired.

“Not really.”

“C’mon.” Maggie patted the spot on the couch next to her and lifted up the corner of the blanket she had draped over her shoulders.

Despite every voice in the rational part of her mind protesting that it was a really terrible idea to spend a second night in a row curled into Maggie’s side, Alex’s body couldn’t care less, happily snuggling up against Maggie and letting herself be tucked into the warm blanket that still smelled like Maggie’s shampoo and her moisturizer and something that was just…her. Her whole body tensed when Maggie wrapped her arms around Alex, but then Maggie’s head was dropping down to Alex’s shoulder and Alex gave up on fighting it, letting her heart nearly beat its way out of her chest.

“Wanna watch something?” Maggie murmured after a few minutes of silence.

“Up to you.”

“Maybe…but I don’t wanna get up.”

Catching sight of the remote still perched on the edge of the entertainment unit, Alex moved to stand up, only to find Maggie’s arms tightening around her like a koala bear. “I can’t very well get the remote if you don’t let go.”

“Don’t wanna. You’re warm.” Maggie nuzzled into her neck a little more, making Alex’s breath catch in her throat.

“Fine.” Alex let out a melodramatic sigh. “I guess you’re coming with me.”

She snickered at Maggie’s surprised yelp as Alex pushed up from the couch, one harm holding Maggie against her side.

“Warn a girl, Danvers!” Maggie thwacked Alex’s chest lightly with an open hand.

As they made their way across the room to get the remote, Maggie shifted slightly, her face popping in front of Alex’s and startling her, almost making her drop Maggie. “What the fuck?” Alex gasped.

“Have you always been this strong?”

Alex hoped Maggie couldn’t see her cheeks coloring in the dark. “I don’t know. Have you always been this tiny?”

“Shut up. It’s h—uh, yeah, good work. Good, uh, muscle building.”

A surge of pride welled up inside of Alex, making her shake her head. What a stupid thing to be proud of.

Eventually, with old reruns of some sitcom from the 90s playing on the television, both Alex and Maggie dropped off to sleep.

Alex woke to Maggie in her lap, everything about her still soft and hazy with sleep. With a yawn, Maggie rubbed at her eyes. “Wha’ time’s it?”

“Early.”

Maggie’s forehead furrowed adorably. “You sure?”

Alex grinned. “No…but isn’t it better this way?”

“Would be if we didn’t have work.”

“It’s the weekend.” Alex watched as Maggie’s face lit up with a smile.

With a little hum, Maggie wrapped her arms tighter around Alex. “Then we should definitely spend all day here together. Crossword and coffee?”

“With you? Anything,” Alex whispered, heat blooming inside her and warming her all the way down to her toes. Of course, when Alex stood to grab the paper and coffee, she found herself yanked back down to the couch by a very clingy Maggie Sawyer. “I think you’ll find it’s a little hard to do the crossword without the paper.”

“Mm, don’t want to let go.”

“This again?” With a sigh of mock-exasperation, Alex wrapped her arms around Maggie and hoisted her up with her as she stood.

“Still so hot,” Maggie murmured, and Alex felt her cheeks warm at the praise.

“Behave. I thought we had plans this morning.”

“I suppose I can wait an hour.” Though her wandering hands seemed to have other ideas, and she only pulled back from Alex’s neck after watching the entire pot of hot coffee nearly crash to the floor when a whole body shiver ran through Alex’s frame.

Eventually they made it back to the living room, and Maggie draped herself over Alex’s lap, insisting that it was the only way she could properly see the puzzle, though Alex knew she just liked the way Alex’s hands found her bare thighs, stroking gently up and down them as she carefully considered each clue.

“You’re so cute when you’re thinking,” Maggie murmured, pressing her lips to Alex’s cheek.

“Mm, you should see me in the lab.”

“Would you let me? I thought you said I was too much of a distraction after last time.”

“What was last time?”

Maggie pulled back, a confused expression on her face. “You’re telling me you don’t remember when I brought you lunch”—Maggie leaned forward, her breath warm against Alex’s ear as she dropped her voice to a low whisper—“and to repay me you bent me over your desk.” Alex shuddered, and the whole room seemed to grow hotter. “You were so good, Alex. Alex. Alex. Alex!”

Alex blinked slowly, startling as Maggie’s face came into view, nearly as close as it had been in her dream. “What?” She figured she could blame the squeakiness on sleep.

“Sorry, I just have to use the bathroom, and you’re just on my leg a little.”

“Oh!” Alex pulled her leg back. “Sorry, I should probably get up anyway.”

“It’s like…5 in the morning.”

“Yeah, uh, good to get a start on things. Probably just gonna go for a run.”

Alex disappeared before Maggie could say anything.

\---

After another long night of cleaning and starting to unpack, Alex faked a yawn. “I am exhausted. Should probably go turn in for the night. So…sleep well.”

She sat wide-awake in her new room with the flickering light until she heard footsteps creeping outside her door. Then quiet. Then receding footsteps. Then they returned with a soft knock and a whispered, “Alex?”

Alex debated the merits of ignoring it, but she’d never been able to ignore Maggie in her moments of need any more than Maggie had for her, so she padded over to the door, pulling the top half open. “Yeah?”

“Oh. Were you asleep?”

“Uh, not really,” Alex hedged. “Can’t sleep?”

Maggie shook her head. “I know it’s stupid but…there’s a weird noise in my room.”

“Oh. Here, I’ll come check it out. Alex turned around, grabbing her phone to use as a flashlight before heading back towards Maggie and promptly toppling headfirst over the damn bottom half of the door.

“Oh my god, are you okay?”

Ignoring the searing pain radiating up and down her shins and the warm trickle that she could only assume was blood, Alex waved her hand in the air, gasping, “Totally good. Super good. Great, even.”

“Alex. Sit down.

“No, no. We’re checking out that noise.”

“And what good will you do me if you can barely stand, hmm?”

With a sigh, Alex let herself be led to the sofa, ignoring the low pull in her stomach as Maggie sank to her knees in front of her, pushing her flannel pajama pants up her shins.

“Sorry,” Alex muttered. “I, uh, I swear I was gonna shave at some point, but then we switched apartments, and the new shower is so small, and—”

“Danvers.” Maggie looked up at her with pursed lips. “When have I ever made you think that I would care whether or not your legs are perfectly smooth?”

“Right, right.” Alex ducked her head down as Maggie returned her attention to her slightly bloody shins, instructing her to wait there while she went and got a few wet paper towels, a bottle of antiseptic, and bandaids to patch her up. “I can do this myself. You really don’t have to.”

“Hey, you’re gonna come protect me from the monster that lives in my wall. It’s the least I can do for you.”

A few minutes later, Alex’s legs were free of blood, and three neon bandages adorned her shins. “It’s a good look,” Maggie had teased. “Battle armor for our coming fight against the wall monster.”

“You know it’s probably just a mouse, right?”

Maggie did not look even slightly appeased by the thought. “Alex! I can deal with big aliens! They make noise when they approach. A mouse…that’ll just crawl right on top of me while I’m sleeping without any warning!”

“What if I…I could watch out for mice while you fall asleep?”

“You’re not gonna stay there the whole night.” Alex didn’t point out that she would have if Maggie asked her to. “It’s fine. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“No, Maggie, you should get a bed. You can take mine.”

“What? Where will you sleep?”

“I can take the couch. It’s my fault we’re here.”

“No, don’t be silly. Your bed’s gigantic. We can share. I mean, if you’ll still have me.”

Alex gulped, pushing back all sorts of inappropriate thoughts about the times Maggie had said something similar in her dreams. “Um, yeah…yeah, that’s fine. I mean, we managed to share the couch last night, right?” She didn’t point out that somehow intentionally sharing a bed felt a whole lot more intimate than passing out watching television together on the couch.

“Past two nights, actually.”

“Right.”

Alex tried so hard to keep herself from falling asleep that evening, ignoring the way Maggie’s warm presence would have made it so easy to just sink into her embrace, to let sleep overtake her, to fall back into the world of dreams where Maggie thought of her as something more than just a friend. After an hour or two of fighting it, Alex succumbed to sleep, almost immediately finding herself right back in the same bed with Maggie but with far fewer clothes and a lot less hesitancy as she pulled the woman tight against her, pressing her lips to Maggie’s and humming as Maggie seemed to melt into her embrace. She woke the next morning with Maggie curled around her and shame sitting hot and heavy in her gut.

By the fourth morning of waking up equal parts turned on and ashamed with Maggie in her arms, Alex decided enough was enough. It didn’t matter how much nicer they’d made the apartment, Maggie clearly wasn’t comfortable in it, and the fridge smell still hadn’t gone away, and goddammit, Alex couldn’t deal with another minute of this exquisite nightly torture.

She slammed her first against the door to her old apartment again and again until Winn and Mon-El unlocked the door, both of them looking exhausted, their hair tousled with sleep and eyes only half open.

“What the fuck?”

“This has been cute and all, the whole switching apartments thing, but we’re done.”

“No way!” Winn gestured behind him at the apartment that had been thoroughly redecorated.

“Yeah,” Mon-El chimed in. “We made a bet. You lost. And now you have to live with it.”

“Listen to me,” Alex growled, advancing forward without a care in the world that it was two-to-one and one of those two was an alien. “You are going to pack up your boxes. You are going to pack up our boxes. And while we are at work, you are going to make sure that both apartments are back to the way they were before, or so help me god, there will be hell to pay.”

Winn looked half-ready to concede, but Mon-El simply crossed his arms over his chest. “No.”

“Excuse me.”

With a nervous laugh, Winn nudged Mon-El’s shoulder. “Maybe we all sit down and talk about this later today when we’re a little more awake, yeah?”

He was met with a resounding “No!” from both of them.

Alex sighed, rubbing at her forehead. “I will give you the original $200. Hell, I’ll make it $300 for the trouble you went through moving. But we are switching back.”

“Absolutely not. This apartment is worth way more than that.”

“It was a stupid bet made in a stupid contest with stupid questions,” Alex snapped.

“That doesn’t make it not a bet!”

Alex felt her blood boiling. “You—you will pay for this.”

And so, for the first time in three years, Alex too a voluntary sick day. And once Winn was at the DEO and Maggie was at the NCPD and Mon-El was wherever the fuck he went before the bar opened, Alex dialed Kara.

“Alex? Are you okay? I heard you took off work…are you dying?”

“Look, I just…can you come over?”

“Um, yeah. I have a meeting with Snapper in ten, then I’ll come right to you.”

Alex had already started packing up the apartment by the time Kara arrived.

“Whoa, what’s going on?”

“I can’t do this.” And Alex could hear the note of frantic desperation in her own voice, understood why Kara swooped right over to her, wrapping her up in her arms.

“Hey, no matter what’s going on, we can fix it, okay?”

“We can.” Alex gave a sharp nod of her head. “We just need the old apartment back.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?”

“By force.”

Kara snorted, covering her mouth quickly. “Sorry, but…you know this isn’t war, right?”

Alex shrugged. Semantics. “Just help me move all the furniture. They’ll have to get used to it.”

“Umm, have you really thought this through?”

“Kara.” Alex took a deep, steadying breath. “Do you know how I’ve spent every night here?”

“Worried about the big rat that lives in the walls?”

“No! Now I will, though!”

Kara grimaced, straightening the sleeves of her blouse. “Er, right. No more guesses, then.”

“I have spent every single night with Maggie in my bed.”

“Wait what? That’s amazing!”

“No!” Alex began pacing across the room, running her hands through her short hair. “No, it’s the farthest fucking thing from amazing. She asks to sleep in bed with me each night because she can’t sleep because of the goddam rat. Because it’s not her room, not her space, not the place she feels comfortable in. Do you know how long it took her to finally feel like she was at home in our old place? She—she hasn’t had a place that felt like hers for a really long time. She doesn’t deserve this.”

“And I’m assuming you probably can’t deal with another day of Maggie in your bed?”

Alex nodded, tugging at the sleeves of her sweater. “It’s pathetic, I know, but—”

“You’re not pathetic, Alex.”

“I am. I’m in love with a woman who will never know because she’ll never think about me as anything other than a friend. Which is fine! That’s her right! But I can’t—I can’t keep living like we’re something more than what we are.”

After a moment’s consideration, Kara gave a firm nod of her head. “Alright. Which box goes first?”

\---

That night, Alex and Maggie sat behind the chain-locked door of their old apartment giggling as they watched Mon-El freak out when he found a note on the door to his old apartment telling him and Winn to check inside.

Less than ten seconds later, they were met with pounding on their door. “Let me in!”

“No,” Alex yelled back. “It’s too late!”

“This isn’t fair!

“Sucks to suck,” Alex taunted. “Not like you can call the police for an apartment whose lease you’re not even on.”

Mon-El fell silent for a moment before stepping up and glaring into the peephole. “You have to go to work at some point. We’re just gonna move all your stuff back.”

Alex felt her shoulders stiffen. It was actually a decent point.

“Maybe we should move back,” Maggie whispered, her hand resting on Alex’s shoulder far too gently.

“No. No…we will figure this out.” Steeling her nerves, Alex undid the deadbolt, but kept the chain done, pulling the door open a few inches. “Okay, we are open to bargaining.”

“What the hell? You lost!”

“Yeah…but maybe we have things you want more than the apartment.”

“I doubt it.”

“What if I wingwoman for you for one night at the alien bar?” Maggie offered.

“I don’t exactly have trouble with the ladies myself, thanks.”

“Or I could stop telling Kara what a terrible idea it would be to date you.” Alex didn’t mention that Kara had pretty much come to that conclusion on her own by that point. Mon-El would figure it out soon enough.

“I…do you think that would help?”

Alex shrugged. “I’m not a mind-reader. I’m only offering what’s in my power.”

“And!” Maggie jumped up. “If you promise to keep your hands to yourself and all comments to a minimum, I’ll take you to that women’s jell-o wrestling night.”

“And I’ll cover your bar tab for the whole evening,” Alex threw out there, watching as Mon-El paused, his earlier anger slowly slipping away.

“And you invite me to your parties this year— _all_ of them.”

Alex and Maggie glanced between each other. “You’ll be on decent behavior?”

He nodded. “Hey, now that I know I have a chance with Kara again, I can’t go blowing it by hitting on all your friends.”

It was a terrible reason, but Alex couldn’t deny that it might be effective. “Okay…and so you’ll let us keep the apartment?”

“On two more conditions.”

Maggie eyed him warily. “What are they?”

“Well, first, Winn needs something.”

“I’ll stop calling him probie at work.”

“I…actually, he’d probably go for that, so sure.”

“What’s your second demand?”

Mon-El grinned. “I want you two to make out for a full minute.”

“Fuck off.” “Sure.”

Alex nearly snapped her neck in her rush to look over at Maggie. “What?”

“I mean…if you’re not okay with it, obviously I change my answer.”

“I, um, I…”

“Hey,” Maggie whispered, stepping over to the side. Alex nearly killed Mon-El when she caught sight of him mouthing, “You’re welcome,” from behind Maggie’s back. “It’s up to you. We can find something else. I just figured, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “You’re attractive and gay. I’m also gay. You’re my best friend. There are far worse things I could do.”

Alex could barely squeak out her agreement. “I, uh, yeah…no, I mean, obviously there’s nothing wrong with you.” She ignored the roll of Mon-El’s eyes. “I just…I know before you said it would be a bad idea, so I wouldn’t, you know, want to force you into something that you didn’t want.”

“Danvers,” Maggie sighed. “That was, like, two years ago, and you were drunk and just barely tip-toeing out of the closet. This is different.”

Alex hated the hope that surged in her chest, knowing that it would only ever lead to crushing disappointment.

“So…ladies?”

Maggie flashed Alex one of those easy smiles that made Alex want to kill all the people who’d ever threatened Maggie’s happiness. And then she was stepping forward and pulling Alex into her with a warm hand, and Alex lost the ability to think coherently as Maggie’s lips found hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year's Eve! I'll see you with the final chapter in 2019!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2019, and enjoy the POV shift for this final chapter!

The press of Alex’s lips against Maggie’s was so impossibly soft. So much softer than Maggie remembered, and _god_ , she’d spent a lot of time remembering it. Remembering the way Alex had looked up at her with those big eyes, the way her heart had thudded almost painfully when she realized that every ounce of Alex’s attention was on her, the way Alex had pulled her in and cupped her jaw in her hands like she never wanted to lose her, wanted to keep her right there with her and make the rest of the world disappear. Of course, Maggie could taste the whiskey she’d just bought Alex on her lips—and knowing Alex and how stressed she’d been with the whole ordeal, was absolutely certain there had been more before she arrived—so she stepped back, ducking her head down to keep Alex from seeing the look of pure want she was sure would be written so clearly on her features. Because that wasn’t what Alex needed. She didn’t need someone with a relationship track record like Maggie’s. She didn’t need someone who carried the weight of failed commitments and broken ties and a bone-deep conviction that nothing she did would ever be enough to make up for all the ways she failed. No, Alex needed fun and light. She needed to meet people—people who weren’t Maggie. She needed to see the world and what it had to offer someone as brilliant and beautiful and perfect as she was. And Maggie swore to herself right then that she would be there for Alex through every step of the way—as a friend, a best friend, a best friend who most definitely didn’t curl into Alex’s side on the couch in their shared apartment at the end of most nights and wish she could press a trail of tender kisses across her jawline and tell her just how beautiful she was. And it worked well enough. Within a week, Alex seemed to have forgotten all about the drunken kiss, and Maggie plastered a forced smile onto her lips and chalked it up to the thrill of coming out and pretended like she didn’t still dream about black leather jackets and slightly calloused hands and soft lips pressing against her own.

A soft whimper escaped Alex’s lips, and Maggie snapped back to reality, trying to balance the rush of aching want with the pang of guilt for having let herself slip too far into the kiss, sucking Alex’s lower lip between her teeth and flicking across it with her tongue.

_This was for a bet. Nothing more._

Figuring a minute had probably passed, if not longer, Maggie forced herself to pull back, forced herself to look less than dazed, forced herself to clear her throat and smile at Alex like they hadn’t just shared one of the best minutes of Maggie’s life.

Mon-El winked at the two of them, making Maggie’s stomach churn, then patted Alex on the shoulder. “You’re welcome.” He shot her a thumbs up before high-tailing it out of the apartment, muttering some random nonsense about giving them space and putting in earplugs and keeping Winn busy. But Maggie was still caught on the, “You’re welcome.” Then again, she reasoned, it was likely about the apartment. He probably assumed that Alex had been the one desperate to move back across the hall since, well, she’d gone and done it—bet be damned.

“So.” Maggie forced herself to shoot Alex her closest approximation to a normal smile that any average person would give to their best friend who they most definitely were not in love with and who they most definitely had not been thinking about dragging into their newly reclaimed bedroom mere moments ago…maybe still. “Uh, should we order some victory pizza? Celebrate getting the apartment back?”

“Um. I need to go.”

A wave of panic rolled over Maggie, making her stomach roil and her skin go clammy and her thoughts threaten to spiral out of control. She’d done it. She’d pushed too goddam far on the kiss, let herself get too swept up in it, and now Alex was leaving for good. “Oh, uh, I’m—I’m sorry. I can just—I can give you the apartment for the night, or—”

“It’s fine.” Alex still wouldn’t make eye contact, and Maggie wanted to cry. Or build a time machine and send herself way back to before they’d ever made the stupid bet. “I just—I have to go.”

“Alex!”

But Alex was already through the front door, her keys still dangling from the hook Maggie had installed after a few too many mornings spent watching Alex rummage through the pockets of too many jackets before she found them.

Maybe it was good, Maggie reasoned. Alex would get a little time. Maggie could regain some semblance of coherent thought to apologize to Alex for her inappropriate conduct and her assumption that Alex wouldn’t mind the kiss. Until she came back, Maggie decided she could at least deep clean the apartment and make it nice for Alex’s return—show her that they could go back to the way things were, being best friends and roommates and not people who also sometimes made out.

Only, Alex didn’t come back that night. And she didn’t come home from work the next day.

In a panic, Maggie sent a text to Kara: “Have you seen Alex?”

She paced around the apartment until her phone chimed with a response that was unusually curt for Kara: “She’s on an assignment for the next week or two.”

Maggie furrowed her brow. Alex had definitely never mentioned a long-term assignment, and even though she knew as well as anyone else that work kept them on their toes, this kind of assignment normally had some build up, time to prepare, to pack at least. Figuring Kara would probably keep tight-lipped for Alex if she’d gone running off in search of new apartments, she strode purposefully across the hallway and knocked on Winn and Mon-El’s door.

Of course Winn wasn’t home. It couldn’t be that easy.

“Hey.” Mon-El wiggled his eyebrows. “How was your night?”

“It was…did you leave something gross in the apartment?”

He flashed her a look of confusion. “Uh…not that I know of. Why?”

“Why would you ask how my night was?”

“Hey, hey, you know I’m not one to judge!” He held both of his hands up in the air. “Maybe you’re not one to kiss and tell…or more. But I’m just saying, I’m happy for you, really.”

“About the apartment?” Maggie wasn’t sure why she was still engaging. She just wanted to go home and start drafting apology letters to Alex. Maybe if she gave them to Kara, she could at least get Alex to look at them, to see that Maggie had merely gotten a little swept up in the moment, nothing weird, certainly nothing that would keep them from living together. Because at least seeing Alex every day was something. Maybe it wasn’t everything, but Maggie had long ago learned to stop hoping for everything. And spending most of her time with Alex, even just as a friend? Well, that was a lot fucking closer to everything than Maggie had ever expected to get.

He looked utterly bewildered. “No. Why would I be happy that you two have the apartment back?”

“What the hell else would you be asking about?”

“What do you think? Alex!”

“Wait. Do you know where Alex is?”

“Uh…is this some, like, trick question?”

“I don’t know!” Maggie finally snapped. “Apparently she’s gone for weeks or something, and I’d love it if someone would at least fucking tell me where or why!”

“Whoa, what’s with the yelling?” Winn asked as he pushed open the door, pausing at the tableau in front of him. “Er, hey, Maggie.”

“You.” Maggie rounded on him. “You work at the DEO.”

Maggie watched his throat bob as he swallowed. “Yes,” he nearly squeaked.

“Where the hell is Alex?” Casting a frantic glance all around the apartment, Winn appeared poised to run. “Don’t even think about it, Schott. Something’s up, and I’m not leaving until I know.”

“I, uh, I—Alex is at work. Or, on a work thing.”

“Yes, this magical surprise two-week trip that I knew nothing about despite living with the woman.”

“I think, maybe, this isn’t really for me to talk about.”

Maggie felt tears sting her eyes and hastily wiped them away with her sleeve. “She’s not—she didn’t answer any of my calls. Or texts. She didn’t come home last night. I just…look, I didn’t mean to freak her out, okay? So if you’re talking to her, and she’s staying at the DEO to avoid me or something, can you just…just tell her that I’m sorry? That I can be her friend and nothing more, really?”

“What?” Mon-El asked. “What exactly happened?”

“You’d know! You’re the reason everything went to shit!”

Winn grimaced, rubbing at his temples. “Look, I think…I think you need to talk to Alex.”

“Then tell her to answer my goddam calls!” Maggie swallowed heavily, her breathing ragged and her whole body feeling unsteady, like there was some small weight rolling around her veins and keeping her from establishing any sense of equilibrium. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—you didn’t deserve that.”

“It’s fine.” Winn waved away her concern. “She, uh, there was a last minute opening. An agent got sick, and J’onn needed someone to join some undercover op out in Opal City. Alex volunteered and flew out this morning.”

“Don’t they have agents there?”

“Look, I don’t—it’s part of something bigger, okay? I didn’t get all the details, and Alex wasn’t on the original case either. I just know that’s where she is. Nothing more.”

“And when will she be back?”

Winn shrugged his shoulders. “Um, whenever they’re done.”

\---

At the end of the first full week without Alex—a week of scrubbing and bleaching the apartment until her fingers were red and raw; a week of barely eating and sleeping even less; a week of writing and rewriting texts, emails, and letters to Alex that varied in how honest they were—Maggie showed up at Kara’s door, banging on it until Kara got home six minutes later, already muttering under her breath about needing to send apology notes to all of her neighbors.

“Where’s Alex?”

“She’s out on a mission,” Kara said, avoiding eye contact.

“Care to explain to me why she took it without telling me?”

“Maggie,” Kara sighed. “It’s not my place to talk about these things.”

“It was just”—Maggie felt her throat closing as tears prickled at her eyes—“Kara, you have to believe me, I didn’t know it would freak her out. I didn’t think—it was just a kiss. And I shouldn’t have, I know now I shouldn’t have. I…the feelings were one-sided, and that’s just waiting for a disaster, but—”

“Maggie, please.” Kara took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, suddenly looking much more like Supergirl than she normally did. “Look, I like you. A lot. You know that, yeah?” Maggie nodded. She wondered how much longer that would last. “But Alex is my sister. She’s always gonna come first. And I just…you hurt her, okay?”

And then Maggie was crying in earnest, and she didn’t _do_ this, certainly not in front of other people, but sobs were wracking her body without much sign of stopping, and it was so hard to get air—too hard to get air.

“Maggie, Maggie!”

She was over on Kara’s couch before she quite knew what had happened, a glass of water and a box of tissues in front of her. “Please breathe, okay? Please. Here, with me, okay? In, 1, 2, 3, 4. Out, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. In, 1, 2, 3, 4. Out, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.”

Slowly but surely, Maggie felt her muscles relax until she was able to sit upright, her face still red and blotchy and streaked with tears.

Kara waited until Maggie looked more steady before speaking. “I…I feel like I’m missing something.”

“I know”—Maggie took a shuddering inhale—“I know that Alex only sees me as a friend, okay? I get it. I didn’t mean—I never wanted her to—please, just tell her I’m sorry about the kiss. She’s not—she won’t answer my texts or calls.”

“What?”

“Just tell her I get it. I’m not about to, I don’t know, try to push for more or anything like that. I get it. We’re friends. She was never supposed to know.”

“What?” Kara repeated, her expression growing increasingly confused.

“Please…I don’t know how long this thing in Opal City is going to last or whatever, or if she’s even going to try to talk to me when she gets back—”

“Oh, I think she’s gonna want to talk to you,” Kara said under her breath.

“Well, it doesn’t really seem like it now.”

“I—I should let Alex talk to you, not me, okay? But don’t, uh, don’t go thinking that you scared her off.”

“What the hell else am I supposed to think?”

“I can’t tell you, okay? But I swear that Alex is not worried that you like her. And if she thought that, she would not have gone running.” After a moment, Kara tilted her head to the side. “Okay, maybe she would have, but for like an hour at most, you know?”

Maggie dropped her head in her hands, wishing anything made sense.

Kara nudged Maggie’s shoulder with her own. “You like Alex?”

“I’m working on getting over it, okay? It’s just…it’s hard.”

Kara hummed, and Maggie swore it looked like she was trying not to smile.

“Please don’t tell Alex.”

“Oh, of course not. I think you should be the one to do it.”

“Excuse me?”

With a nod, Kara continued as if she wasn’t telling Maggie to confirm all the things that drove Alex away. “Oh yes, I think you should use the most precise language you can think of too. Direct statements only. No questions. No hypotheticals.”

“Ah yes,” Maggie sighed, “because sitting Alex down after she bolted when I kissed her—for a bet, I might add, not even for, like, myself—and saying, ‘Hey, best friend! This friendship is great and all, but also I’m totally in love with you,’ sounds like a great plan.”

“You’re…what?”

“What? I like her.”

“That’s not what you said.”

Maggie tilted her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“I promise you, the minute Alex gets back, I’m sending her over, okay? And you just—you tell her what you just told me.”

“You gonna buy me a bottle of scotch after? Or find me a new apartment?”

“If I say yes, will you do it?”

“I think this is a terrible idea.”

“Maggie, you’re just gonna have to trust me on it.”

In that moment Maggie hated that goddam pout more than she hated most things, but she found herself nodding despite her reservations.

Which was how, exactly six days later after receiving a text from Kara confirming that Alex was on her way home, Maggie found herself back at Anthony’s to pick up more of the mediocre pizza they’d shared on their first night in the apartment. It was good. Like bookends. Since she was still fairly certain she was going to end up kicked to the curb, or at least crashing elsewhere until Alex got over the weirdness. But she’d have pizza. And scotch. Because she wasn’t letting Kara get out of that one.

The whole way back to the apartment, Maggie rehearsed different versions of what she could say to Alex. None of them sounded right. Then again, there was no real ‘right’ way to tell your best friend who you also live with that you’re head over heels for them even though you know it’s not reciprocated.

When she got back, she found Alex leaning up against the door looking effortlessly gorgeous. Of course, that easy coolness slipped away the moment she caught sight of Maggie, her back sliding as she nearly fell to her ass before righting herself with a few choice words.

“Um, hi.”

“Hey.”

Maggie clutched the pizza box a little harder, feeling the warm cardboard give way beneath her fingertips. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

Alex rubbed at the back of her neck. “Uh, yeah…last minute. Unavoidable.”

“Really?” Maggie arched an eyebrow. “I heard you volunteered.”

Alex’s whole body seemed to jolt. Eventually, she gave a barely perceptible nod. “I may have.”

“I, uh—can you just hold this for a second?” Maggie handed off the pizza, fishing her keys out of her pocket and letting them inside. She took the pizza box then, carefully setting it down on the counter and taking a few deep breaths while she still had time to back out. But no, she needed to say it. She’d spent nearly a full week agonizing over how she would say it, and she just had to get it out of her system or something. Like the stomach flu. And probably just as awful.

“Maggie—”

“Alex—”

“I should probably—”

“Do you mind if I—”

They both stared at each other in silence.

Finally, Maggie cleared her throat. “Look, I’m just gonna say this really fast, then you can say whatever you need to say to me, I promise.”

Alex looked like she wanted to argue, but after a moment, she nodded.

“I’m sorry about the kiss. I—I assumed it wouldn’t be a bad way to get back the apartment. I thought we’d keep it simple, and I’m sorry for turning it into…more than it had to be. I—it was inappropriate. You deserve better, and I’m sorry for that.”

“Maggie, I—”

“Please? I really need to finish.” She took Alex’s silence as a sign to continue. “If you don’t want to live with me anymore, I’ll get it. I mean, I’d like to think that you could trust me enough to—but it’s fine, okay? I’ll respect whatever you want.”

“Maggie, it’s not—”

“Alex,” Maggie sighed. “One more second.”

Alex nodded that time.

“I like you, okay? At first I thought it was just some little straight girl crush that would go away on its own. Then you came out, and it was a little harder to deal with, but, you know, I figured it would fade with time. You were my best friend first, and that’s what mattered. But then…living with you…seeing you all the time”—Maggie’s eyes fluttered close for a moment as she pictured the mornings when Alex would trudge out in those ratty old t-shirts or the nights she’d leave in tight black pants that made Maggie’s throat go dry and prayed she wouldn’t have to give up those moments forever—“it got harder to ignore just how much I wanted to be doing things like holding your hand during more than just scary movies and kissing you at the end of our dinners out and making your breakfast in the morning without having to insist that I was already making some for myself.”

Maggie chanced a glance up at Alex, finding her mouth hanging slightly open and her eyes wide.

“Sorry, I ruined everything. I’ll just—I can crash with Winn—”

“Don’t!”

“Um…”

“I… How… Seriously?”

“I’m sorry.” Maggie swallowed past the lump in her throat, willing herself not to cry.

“You are telling me that all those nights we spent cuddled up on that couch with me using every fucking ounce of willpower I possess to keep myself from kissing you…I could have? I could have just _done that_?”

“What?”

“Why the hell…the night at Dollywood…”

Maggie pulled at her sleeves. “You deserve better than me, Alex,” she whispered. “You deserve someone who would make you happy.”

“Fuck that. Maybe I deserved better than you assuming you knew what would make me happy, since it is glaringly obvious to everyone who is not you that you, Maggie—being around you—is what makes me smile. But deserving better than _you_?” Alex shook her head. “That’s impossible, Maggie. Because you…you make me feel more myself than anyone else, and getting to share even more of who I am with you? Getting to share more of my life with you? That sounds like the best thing I could do.”

Maggie tried to wrap her head around everything Alex was saying. “So I don’t have to move out?”

Alex rolled her eyes as she closed the gap between them in two long strides, cupping Maggie’s jaw and trailing her thumb along her cheekbone. “I’d be very upset if you did,” she whispered, “when I can finally, _finally_ do this.”

And then she was leaning in and pressing her lips to Maggie’s, and for the first time, Maggie let herself sink into it, let herself enjoy every moment of kissing Alex Danvers.

“You don’t get to leave this time, okay?” Maggie murmured between kisses.

“So long as you’re here, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

As it turned out, neither Maggie nor Alex left the apartment. For 48 glorious hours.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm occasionally on Tumblr @sapphicscholarwrites and on Twitter @sapphicscholar


End file.
